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CIA report must be declassified

The best way to clear the air is to let the public see what a select group of senators already has learned.

By The Denver Post Editorial Board

Updated:
02/11/2013 04:57:26 PM EST

CIA director nominee John Brennan testifies during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee last Thursday. (Manuel Balce Ceneta, The Associated Press)

The Senate Intelligence Committee has compiled an exhaustive classified document — and at more than 6,000 pages and 35,000 footnotes, we do mean exhaustive — raising additional questions about the CIA's former policies on detention and interrogation of terrorists, and also about how they were presented to the public.

But will the report ever see the light of day?

Democratic Sen. Mark Udall thinks that much of it can and should be declassified and released, and we hope he continues to push his colleagues and the executive branch into doing so.

On Friday, his spokesman assured us he would.

Unfortunately, Udall didn't get far Thursday in persuading CIA director nominee John Brennan, currently White House counterterrorism chief, of the importance of declassification.

During a hearing on his nomination, Brennan conceded to the committee that "there clearly were a number of things, many things, I read in that report that were very concerning and disturbing to me." And he promised to look into some of the contentions "immediately if I were to be confirmed as CIA director," as well as to be as transparent about the findings as he could.

Udall pointed out that the identities of the most important detainees and the discredited interrogation techniques have already been declassified, while much of the intelligence itself was declassified when the Bush administration revealed plots that were allegedly foiled as a result of the CIA's program. Given that context, he asked Brennan if he could "think of any reason the report could not be declassified with the appropriate redactions."

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Brennan replied with a statement of pure evasion and bureaucratese.

"I would have to take that declassification request under serious consideration, obviously," he said. "That's a very weighty decision in terms of declassifying that report and I would give it due consideration, but there are a lot of considerations that go into such decisions."

At some point, the Senate committee should go ahead and vote to send the report to the CIA for release after appropriate redactions to protect any ongoing operations and agents or other genuinely sensitive material. But it's terribly important that a major portion of the report on one of the most regrettable programs in recent U.S. history see the light of day.

In the eyes of committee chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the report is "one of the most significant oversight efforts in the history of the United States Senate, and by far the most important oversight activity ever conducted by this committee."

Udall says the CIA misled the White House, Congress and the public, and that misleading information is still being repeated, knowingly or not, by former CIA officers. The best way to clear the air, Udall rightly insists, is to let the public discover what a select group of senators already has learned.